Ron Asheton, who played guitar for The Stooges, has died at the age of 60. The Stooges were born in the late 1960s in Ann Arbor, near Detroit, in the aftermath of psychedelia and garage rock explosion; often joining on gigs The MC5, who considered The Stooges their "little brother" band. Like Scott Asheton, his drummer brother and fellow Stooges member, Ron Asheton always remained in the shadow of Iggy Pop, the wild frontman of the band (who later became a successful solo artist, recording with such people as David Bowie), but it was Ron's spiky guitar sound which was there to influence punk rock some years after The Stooges had split.
The 21st century Stooges reunion saw Iggy, Ron and Scott together again, though for many fans the 2007 album The Weirdness is best to be forgotten: just stick to the classics, The Stooges (1969), Funhouse (1970) and Raw Power (1973; although Ron was only "reduced" to play bass there, with James Williamson on guitar) -- there's also plenty of sessions, unreleased and bootleg material around, just see The Stooges @ Discogs. As the band themselves put it on one of their more rare songs: Jesus Loves The Stooges! R.I.P. Ron.
Topralli (1966) might be one of the strangest Finnish film turkeys ever made. Filmed entirely without a script on a shoestring budget and being more often than not technically insipid, it's a loose collection of musical performances from some of the day's hottest pop artists in Finland (and as international guest stars, The Renegades from England; totally unknown in their own country but extremely popular here), tied together with clumsy slapstick comedy ("Hot mjölk", anyone?) of a geekish record company executive's (played by the film's director Yrjö Tähtelä) efforts to organise a big musical show extravaganza in order to celebrate the record company's anniversary. Or something like that. Though offering countless embarrassing moments to make a dumbfounded spectator just cringe, there's also something undeniably charming in the overall innocent stupidity and apparent do-it-yourself amateur spirit of the film in these more calculated and cynical times of the music business overkill; many of these performances also remaining as rare visual documents from the pre-music video days.
Especially hilarious is the performance of the up-and-coming starlet Katri-Helena (now an elder stateswoman in Finnish iskelmä scene) doing with the late Irwin Goodman some dance steps to 'Polkkis' in the wintry landscape, apparently emulating the nervous movements of a person with a full bladder anxiously waiting behind the door of an occupied bathroom. Or maybe being just two lunatics awaiting their institutionalisation. Polkkis was obviously meant as a rivalling dance craze to the extremely popular Letkajenkka (or "Letkiss", as it was internationally known). Only in the 60s Finland...
'Semi-Circle Solitude' is probably my all-time favourite track from Blues Section, a late-60s Finnish rhythm & blues/psychedelic band fronted by a great British ex-pat singer-songwriter, Jim Pembroke (later of Wigwam, another band worth checking out and don't let the "progessive rock" tag put you off, because there's some memorable songwriting here, too). The film excerpts for 'Semi-Circle Solitude' and 'Cherry Cup-Cake Twist' are from Jaakko Pakkasvirta's documentary film Eläköön nuoruus ("Viva Youth", 1968). 'Hey Hey Hey' was used in Mikko Niskanen's 1967 film Lapualaismorsian, in a sequence depicting how students in Helsinki celebrate Mayday.
YouTube also has Blues Section's 'Kuka kertoisi minulle?' ("Who would tell me?"; as vocalist Pepe Willberg, formerly of The Jormas), from Timo Bergholm's drama film Punahilkka ("Little Red Riding Hood"), another movie from 1968. Furthermore, there's a clip of 'End of a Poem', from their 1996 comeback gig.
And as bonus, more Jim Pembroke songwriting, 'Simple Human Kindness' from Wigwam's "deep pop" album Nuclear Nightclub (1975); this studio live is from 1976:
Screamadelica Don't Fight It, Feel It Higher Than The Sun
Paul Cannell (16 March 1963 - 5 July 2005) was responsible for the artwork of Screamadelica-era Primal Scream. Most famous of these was the "psychedelic fried eggs" illustration for that 1991 album, which the band adopted as their logo, too; also for Primal Scream's singles from the album, such as Higher Than The Sun and Don't Fight It, Feel It. Cannell created here a sort of fascinating and mind-bending combination of bright day-glo pop art colours and symbols, primitive art, expressionism and psychedelia; essentially creating a visual equivalent for Screamadelica's po-mo mixture of 60s retro psych-pop and electronic/dub sounds, Primal Scream's finest moment so far, which briefly epitomised the early-90s British "indie meets rave" scene.
As to the music itself, infamously, a lot of the output for the album was not actually created by the band themselves (who were earlier known as The Rolling Stones/MC5 copycats; the henchman Bobby Gillespie having also previously played drums for Jesus and The Mary Chain) but by the producers and remixers such as Andy Weatherall and The Orb's Alex Paterson, while the band was concentrating on just, erm, getting higher than the sun.
One of the band's contemporaries and rivals in the early-90s neo-psychedelic dance music scene, Colin Angus of The Shamen bitterly compared in an i-D magazine interview Primal Scream with The Chocolate Watch Band, a US West Coast band of the late-60s, who similarly were rather spending their time enjoying psychedelic substances in the studio backroom while their producer Ed Cobb (the man also behind The Standells and responsible for writing Gloria Jones's 'Tainted Love', later immortalised by Soft Cell) worked out with studio musicians some dazzling baroque psych soundscapes ending up on the band's album.
Anyway, despite (or maybe because of it) this lack of "authenticity" (yawn), I'm a fan both of Screamadelica and The Chocolate Watch Band. The Shamen quickly disappeared up their own Terence McKenna-inspired cyberdelic wormhole with such god-awful singles as 'Destination Eschaton' but the Primals are still around, even though their erratic output (subsequent albums featuring in turns techno sounds and "back to the roots" pastiche country rock) has for me never again reached similar solar heights.
Back to Paul Cannell, he also created artwork for such bands as Manic Street Preachers, Shonen Knife, Flowered Up and The Telescopes. Sadly, Paul Cannell ended up taking his own life in 2005, but his vision lives on.
Yle Teema showed last night The Deadly Bees, a British horror film from 1966. It featured this all-too-short excerpt from The Birds (not to be confused with their more famous US counterpart, The Byrds), an interesting UK mod/freakbeat band featuring young Ronnie Wood, before his later fame in The Faces and The Rolling Stones.
[NOTE: THIS COMPILATION HAS NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED YET. PLEASE, DON'T SEND ME ANY ENQUIRIES ABOUT WHERE TO GET IT. Whenever I will receive information about the official release and label, I am going to add the info to this blog; before that, ALL ENQUIRIES WILL BE IGNORED.]
Some time ago I received from Euphonic, a Finnish record collector, this 2-CDR compilation which is now seeking for an official release. Suffice it to say I was very happily surprised and also truly flabbergasted by the contents here. You see, as old fans of this type of music, for some years me and some friends have been toying with the idea of a Finnish counterpart to the legendary compilation records Nuggets and Pebbles, consisting of garage rock, freakbeat and psychedelic pop of the 1960s.
The quest for similar Finnish bands and songs from the same era has been mind-boggling but not a little bit frustrating, especially with us not being heavy-duty vinyl-hunting record collectors ourselves but rather lazy dabblers usually happy with CD re-releases; it also often having felt there are scarcely a handful of local examples which would have even remotely fitted to this template. In that period between the early 60s Finnish rautalanka craze (instrumental guitar bands styled after The Ventures, The Shadows, et al.) and the progressive rock bands such as Wigwam and Tasavallan Presidentti emerging in the end of that same decade, as Euphonic expertly points out with his track choices, there was apparently quite a lot of "Nuggetish" music from local bands; many of them unfortunately lost in the mists of time. At least before their re-emergence here.
On the other hand, the question of what is exactly kosher and what is not for this type of compilation is of some dispute. It's good to remember even the variety of selections on countless Nuggets compilations and CD boxes can be quite heterogenous; varying from raunchier "proto-punk" of the bands like The Sonics to some more light and soft pop or ballads, even though of slightly psychedelic (or pseudo-psychedelic) flavour. Euphonic commented in the related thread at GaragePunk.com another similarly-themed (and also unofficial) compilation Pebbles from the Shores of Thousand Lakes, that the "comp was well meant and all that, but it really stretches the whole Nuggets concept into unrecognizability by including a lot of material that simply does not belong there". Likewise, following these same strict criteria, pHinnWeb's own tentative efforts to find a repertoire of representative songs here might be considered more or less misled, too... Personal tastes and preferences aside, I really think Euphonic (and his contributing record-collecting compadres) has done an amazing work here in digging up some of these little musical, erm, nuggets (or, perhaps in this case, frosty ice-covered pebbles).
The collection features a booklet of extensive liner notes by Euphonic; featuring a chockful of background information on Finnish rock scene of the day, detailed band biographies with information on respective line-ups and naturally of the original releases' record labels and catalogue numbers.
About the bands themselves, most of them hail from Helsinki, though represented too are such towns as Espoo, Tampere, Turku, Hämeenlinna, Jyväskylä, Porvoo, Kuusankoski, Somero (the pre-fame Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki on Chuck Berry), Tornio and Mariehamn; indicating that a vibrant beat scene was found all over the country, not only in its most obvious urban spots. The double-album also prominently features some bands who were not Finnish but instead recorded or enjoyed their biggest popularity here. The most notable of these is of course Birmingham's Renegades, who busted Finnish charts with their 'Cadillac'. Also Brummies were The Andicaps featured here. From Liverpool hailed The Kirkbys, and from Blackpool Reverend Black & The Rocking Vickers; the latter band featuring in its line-up one Ian Willis, later better known as Lemmy of Motörhead and Hawkwind! Such British expats as Jim Pembroke (The Pems, Blues Section) and Frank Robson (Mosaic) also have their important role here. The most curious foreign guest on the compilation must be, though, Petr Novák, appearing with George & The Beatovens, hailing from Communist Czechoslovakia, but enjoying a brief Finnish stint.
I don't know if it's too purposeful to give any detailed reviews of every featured band here, but some personal highlights include, for example, The Beat Stones' 'V.I.P.', perhaps following somewhere in the footsteps of The Yardbirds; the legendary 'Kevät' ("Spring") by New Joys with its ultra-sharp, fuzzy band sound and somewhat gloomy lyrics (during long winter nights a guy dreams of spring so he could be with his girl -- so, spring finally comes but the girl won't be anywhere to be seen); 'Meditation' by Mariehamn's Hitch Hikers (a bluesy excursion featuring some protopsychedelic-sounding guitar modulations reminiscing of Indian music); Blues Section's hard-driving, sound FX-laden 'Hey Hey Hey' and The Islanders' wah-wah guitar and violin-flavoured arrangement of 'Beat The Clock' by The McCoys (UK), featuring as its vocalist Kirill "Kirka" Babitzin, who recently died (eerily, I received these records the very same day the news were widely spread in Finnish media of Kirka's passing). As an overview, all 66 tracks featured here give even a somewhat surprising image of the 60s Finnish band scene as extremely vivid and well aware of international trends of its day. (Even though the English language in some lyrics leaves something to be desired, to say the least.) Kudos to Mr. Euphonic for putting together this massive work.
Finnish Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from a Remote Northern Country, Vol. 1 (Disc One)
1. The Renegades (UK): Cadillac 2. The Needles: A Dying Man 3. Eero & The Boys: Route 66 4. Eddy & The Lightnings: Shut Up 5. Topmost: The "In" Crowd 6. Jim & The Beatmakers: My Only One 7. The Beat Stones: V.I.P. 8. Antti "Andy" Einiö & The Islanders: Farmer John 9. The Holders: I Only Want to Look at You 10. Rev. Black & The Rocking Vickers (UK): Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart 11. Eddy & The Lightnings: Olet paha! 12. Cay & The Scaffolds: Girls 13. The Savages: Hip Hop 14. The Renegades (UK): Far From It 15. Jormas: New Orleans 16. The Firestones: Can Anyone Be True 17. Jim Pembroke (UK) & The Pems: I Don't Mind, I Got Mine 18. The Mods: Tommy Jones 19. Silvery: There's No Other (Like My Baby) 20. New Joys: Kevät 21. The Kirkbys (UK): 'Cos My Baby's Gone 22. The Roosters: Hold Me 23. Cay & The Scaffolds: You 24. Jormas: Dance to the Locomotion 25. Topmost: I'll Go Crazy 26. The Needles: Where Can She Be 27. Buddy & The Wiremen: Shanghai 28. The Downwalkers: I Don't Believe You 29. The Esquires: Tunnen sen 30. The Coyotes: Angela 31. Eero & Jussi, with The Boys: Hello Josephine 32. Jormas: California Dreamin' 33. The Gregory Allan: Shape of Surprise
Finnish Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from a Remote Northern Country, Vol. 2 (Disc Two)
1. Blues Section: Call Me On Your Telephone 2. The Scaffolds: I Wanna Be 3. Eddy & The Lightnings: Any More 4. Eero & Jussi, with The Boys: I Just Wanna Make Love to You 5.The Renegades (UK): Take A Heart 6. The Andicaps (UK): You Make Me Happy 7. The Hitch Hikers: Meditation 8. King Albert & His Strolling Bones: The Octopus 9. The Sounds: Roll Over Bach 10. Jim & The Beatmakers: You Can't Go Away 11. Eero & The Boys: Sinä vain 12. The Scaffolds: You're Running Out of Money 13. The Islanders: Beat the Clock 14. The Kirkbys (UK): Don't You Want Me No More 15. The Roosters: What Have I Got of My Own 16. The Five Comets: I'm Coming 17. Blues Section: Hey, Hey, Hey 18. Harry & The Hound Dogs: You Better Be All Right 19. The Five Yes: Bye Bye Johnny 20. Ernos: Harha 21. The Renegades (UK): Thirteen Women 22. Jormas: I Can't Break The Habit 23. Johnny & The Sounds: I Can't Break The Habit 24. The Roosters: See See Rider 25. Topmost: I Keep Forgettin' 26. The Careless: Desolate Time 27. The Victors: I'm In Love With You 28. The Rondo Four: Get On The Road 29. The First: Olet mielessäin 30. The Tonics: Hey Mister Flowerman 31. Petr Novák, with George & The Beatovens (Czechoslovakia): Why Do You Leave Me 32. Frank Robson & Mosaic: Happier Man 33. Silvery: Free
Topmost, a band featured on this compilation, was probably best known in Finland for these translated cover versions, respectively, of 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' by Procol Harum and 'Black Is Black' by Los Bravos.
The Creatures (not to be confused with Siouxsie Sioux's UK project of the same name!) was a Finnish band featuring the talents of young Kirka Babitzin (only 15 at the time of this excerpt) and Henry "Remu" Aaltonen, later best known as the drummer of The Hurriganes [sic]. Sadly the band never got to record, so one of few remaining testimonies of their fierce energy is found in Mikko Niskanen's 1966 film Käpy selän alla, where this excerpt is taken from.
I just got The Music Machine's 2-CD compilation The Ultimate Turn-On (Ace Records, 2006), collecting together all the works of the band's original line-up; with the 1966 album Turn On (both as mono and stereo versions), all singles and some rehearsal tapes, demos and alternate takes.
The Music Machine, headed by Sean Bonniwell, was one of the most intriguing fuzz guitar-wielding "garage"-type bands coming into prominence in that golden year of 1966 when psychedelic music was still raw and relentless, having not yet decayed into boring, meandering, endless blues jams of San Francisco bands or boring, meandering, endless pseudo-classical jams of progressive rock acts. The biggest Music Machine hit was the fierce 'Talk Talk', truly punk rock, only about ten years before Johnny Rotten and his foul-mouthed compadres made British TV watchers spill their evening teas. Well, for me, the original "punk" of the ca. '64-'67 garage/"freakbeat" bands is always far more inspiring than the more nihilistic late 70s style, born under much bleaker, more cynical and disillusioned circumstances of the latter decade.
The Music Machine were forerunners in other ways, too. Preceding also gothic rock by some fifteen years, the band were uniformly dressed in black, wearing black gloves too (though curiously only in the right hand for each member), and even dyeing their moppish "beat" haircuts black. This sinister look must have been quite a sight to see among all the colourful groups of the day when hippie style, with its often-garish "day-glo" colours, was already emerging in the underground.
Some similarly gloomy overtones were also reflected in the band's music: the best psychedelic garage, more than flowers and mellow peace feelings of the hippies, always verged on the raw, gloomy feel of existential angst and even bad trip psychotic breakdown. With some extra luck and less music business shortcomings than eventually befell them, The Music Machine -- with Sean Bonniwell as their charismatic but enigmatic frontman with growling vocals and dark lyrics like Jim Morrison had, though admittedly with less "poetic" pretensions -- might finally have reached the same magnitude as The Doors did. If only...
I got me a complication And it's an only child Concernin' my reputation As something more than wild I know it serves me right But I can't sleep at night Have to hide my face Or go some other play-ay-ay-ay-ay-ace
I won't cry out for justice Admit that I was wrong I'll stay in hibernation 'Til the talk subsides to gone My social life's a dud My name is really mud I'm up to here in lies Guess I'm down to size To size
Can't seem to talk about The things that bother me Seems to be What everybody has Against me Oh, oh, all right
Here's the situation And how it really stands I'm out of circulation I've all but washed my hands My social life's a dud My name is really mud I'm up to here in lies Guess I'm down to size To size
Pasi Lehtomaa lists his candidates for the "Finnish Nuggets" in his 60s garage rock book Ritarien varjot - autotallirokin aatelisia (Pop-Kirja 18, published by Pop-Lehti magazine of Tampere in 2005):
Blues Section: 'Call Me On Your Telephone'
Buddy and the Wiremen: 'Shanghai'
The Careless: 'Desolate Time'
The Downwalkers: 'I Don't Believe You' [recorded in July 1966]
Jormas: 'The Loco-Motion'
The Needles: 'Dying Man'
The New Joys: 'Kevät'
Lehtomaa also rates such UK acts that were popular in the 1960s Finland as The Kirkbys with their 'Don't You Want Me No More' and 'Thirteen Women' by The Renegades.
[Blues Section, perhaps the best band to represent Finnish Nuggets/Pebbles spirit of garage psychedelia]
pHinnWeb has under its Beyond the Calico Wall page, dedicated to 1960s garage/psychedelic rock, a Finland subpage which introduces some bands and tracks that might be included if there was a Finnish version of Nuggets and Pebbles, famous compilation albums and boxes of 60s garage/freakbeat/psychedelic rock.
Making your own home compilation tapes and CD-Rs is always a lot of fun. Jani Hellén has compiled his own unofficial home compilation called Pebbles from the Shores of Thousand Lakes - Finnish Nuggets Vol. 1: Garage, Beat, Psychedelia & Proto-Punk from Finland 1964-74. The tracklist is:
01 - Danny & The Islanders - 'East Virginia' (1964) 02 - Eddy & The Lightnings - 'Shut Up' (1964) 03 - The Renegades - 'Cadillac' (1964) 04 - Jim & The Beatmakers - 'My Only One' (1964) 05 - The Renegades - 'My Heart Must Do The Crying' (1965) 06 - Ernos - 'Harha' (1966) 07 - Eero ja Jussi And The Boys - 'Kaipaan sua' (1967) 08 - Irwin Goodman - 'Haista itse vaan' (1967) 09 - Blues Section - 'Call Me On Your Telephone' (1967) 10 - Blues Section - 'Hey Hey Hey' (1967) 11 - Topmost - 'Longin For June' (1967) 12 - Ernos - 'Maria Louiza' (1968) 13 - Tasavallan Presidentti - 'Driving Through' (1969) 14 - Wigwam - 'Luulosairas' (1969) 15 - Charlies - 'Taiteen kritiikistä' (1970) 16 - Suomen Talvisota 1939-40 - 'Kekkonen-rock' (1970) 17 - Suomen Talvisota 1939-40 - 'Kasvoton Kuolema' and 'Sirhan Sirhan' (1970) 18 - Virtanen - 'Elektroninen Xtaasi' (1974)
As the criteria has been used that the track should be an original (not a Finnish translation/cover version) or an arrangement of some "trad" song. The Renegades (UK) is included because they recorded in Finland, and Jee jee jee, the history of Finnish rock, considers the band -- at the height of their popularity in this country -- almost Finnish.
Hellén plans for Volume 2 more Ernos (which he calls "Finnish Zombies") and some tracks from the second album of Charlies, allegedly much heavier one than their film soundtrack Julisteiden liimaajat which has gained a cult reputation. Also considered is Kirka's 'Hetki lyö', even though it is a translation of The McCoys' 'Beat the Clock', since the original is not too well known internationally, and Paroni Paakkunainen's innovative arrangement bringing more depth to Kirka's version.
So, you can't find this compilation from any shops, but you might try looking for its individual tracks from (Finnish) public libraries, friends' record collections, or if you have some extra money burning in your pockets, even buy some existing albums with these tracks (remember pHinnWeb does not encourage any illegal file sharing, kids!), and make your own copy of the compilation, so happy hunting!
